The American and the Bus Driver: A Memoir

By Paummi Sarrazin

"The American and the Bus Driver" is a captivating true story that transcends boundaries and explores the depths of love and personal transformation. Paummi, a French teacher from Maryland, unexpectedly finds herself entwined in a relationship with Jeanmi, a French bus driver, during a spring break trip. Their chance encounter sparks a chain of events that prompts Paummi to reconsider her life's trajectory.

As their bond deepens, Paummi grapples with the decision of settling down far away from home. Driven by love and an enduring affinity for France, she moves to Jeanmi's small village in the high French Alps. Despite her previous familiarity with the French language and culture, Paummi finds herself struggling to fit into the insular Alpine community. The nuances of rural life, visa challenges, and the intimidating boundaries between locals and outsiders further complicate her situation.

Caught between her past in America and her potential future in France, Paummi must ask herself: is she ready to redefine her identity and commit to a new life in the French Alps and in Jeanmi's life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350907827

Paummi Sarrazin

Paummi Sarrazin, a seasoned French teacher, has led a life bridging two continents. At 13, she first moved to France and fell in love with its culture, returning for a more permanent stay at 35. Despite her global travels, she feels most at home in the French Alpine village of Saint Crépin, where she lives with her husband, son, and two dogs. "The American and the Bus Driver" is Paummi's debut novel, capturing her unique journey. Between writing and contemplating her next book, she immerses herself in cooking, hiking, kayaking, and reading.

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© 2023 Paummi Sarrazin

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 979-8-35090-781-0 eBook 979-8-35090-782-7

There’s always a grain of madness in love, just as there’s always a grain of logic in madness.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Contents

Prologue

Part I

The Arrival

1 – First Impressions

2 – Nice

3 – Autrefois

4 – Reassimilation

5 - The Statue

6 – The Tour

7 – La Tour Eiffel

8 - Adieu

9 – Montmartre

10 – Leaving

Part II

Long Distance

11 - Home

12 - Coupling

13 – Reality Check

14 – Conditions of Engagement

15 – Disentanglement

16 - Change of Plans

17 - The Test Run

18 – The In-Laws (Part 1)

19 - The Chalet

20 – Bedhead

21 – Faith

22 - The Wedding

23 – Afterglow

24 - Leap Of Faith

Part III

Rentrer

25 – Homecoming

26 - A New Normal

27 - The In-Laws (Part 2)

28 – Estival

29 – Preparations

30 – Reverence

31 - Mon Héros

32 - The Container

33 - The Great Outdoors

34 - Francis and Jeannot

35 – Malade

36 – Doubt

37 – Formalities

38 – Méchoui

39 – Vows

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Prologue

The summer of 2004 was the summer of the cicada in Maryland. Their arrival was the stuff of legends. Every seventeen years, the nymphs hatch and burrow up through the ground leaving dirt nuggets that resemble goose poop next to pinky-sized holes. They do this en masse, by the millions. From there, they climb up the nearest tree or bush or post where, from inside their shells, they transform into delicate, light yellow, flying creatures. When they emerge, the skeletons of their former selves stay stuck on the trees, ghosts of their former selves, looking almost alive.

Their outer shell hardens, and, within days, the mating begins. The males call to the females with a variety of songs—chirps which produce noise levels to rival the loudest rock concerts. People living nearby scramble for ear plugs and try to sleep by closing the windows and putting pillows over their heads. The female cicadas then deposit two to four dozen eggs into the bark of trees, and they do this as often as possible in the three to four weeks until they perish. The final part of the cycle comes six to ten weeks later when juvenile cicadas emerge from the eggs, drop to the ground, and burrow into the dirt awaiting the visceral cue to resurface.

Entomologists are unable to explain why the cicadas come in seventeen-year intervals or how they know it is time to emerge. The ground temperature needed for the nymphs to begin their voyage to the surface is reached yearly, it would seem, yet the cicadas wait. In the end, though, somehow, driven by instincts or genetics or the divine, they know just the right moment to begin their transformation.

In retrospect, I suppose I did, too. Mine might not have been as fascinating or loud a transformation, but like with the cicadas, after close to a seventeen year wait, an invisible force moved me to resurface and recreate myself. This is how it happened.

Part I

The Arrival

1 – First Impressions

Trudging down the jetway at the Nice airport, I contrasted ridiculously with the French women strutting past in their stylish outfits and meticulous make-up. Before landing, I hadn’t even bothered to brush my hair. Had I known I was about to meet my future husband, I want to believe I would have dressed differently. A low-cut blouse, most likely. Fitted trousers or an above-the-knee pencil skirt. Flattering heels or wedges. Instead, I wore baggy drawstring pants, an oversized cotton sweater, and worst of all, clunky, black leather pockmarked slip-ons with thick rubber soles.

I’d always prided myself on being able to slide into France unnoticed by not standing out as an American. As I’d prepared for this trip, though, I must have been distracted, going over, for the thousandth time, how life had not played out as I’d imagined it should have. At seventeen, I’d planned everything. Wedding at twenty-five. First kid at twenty-seven. First house at twenty-eight. A second kid and the beginning of a brilliant career would follow in quick succession. I pictured my life with my partner, the two kids, a dog, a house with a deck. We’d host weekend barbecue parties and send holiday cards with pictures from our family vacations.

My cousins had all done it. College friends had done it. How many registry lists had I picked up in Macy’s and Target before heading off to the kitchen or home goods departments, noting items to add to my own list someday? How many times had I tried to catch that bouquet flying over the bride’s shoulder, sure that I’d be next to spend months fretting about bridal parties, cake flavors, and wedding venues?

Life at thirty-five did not resemble my plan at all.

My home life, for one, was a complete failure. I shared a house with my ex-girlfriend, Meredith, who only answered to Mere, an alcoholic line cook with aspirations of being the next lead drummer for a heavy metal band. She wasn’t a terrible person, really, except when she drank, which ended up being all the time. When we first met at a bar, I assumed she’d just had a few too many. Too late, I realized she always had too many.

Home involved her yelling and me either yelling back or cowering in tears. I learned to accept and then excuse the alcoholism and the violence that came with it. I grew more willing to pardon being hurt and abused, too ashamed to admit to the toxicity of our relationship. I gave up trying to fix her. I gave up trying to have any control at our house. I gave up believing I’d find happiness. I gave up a lot.

So, coming off the jetway in Nice in March 2004, eight hours after taking off from Dulles airport in Virginia, I traipsed behind my thirteen screeching and giggling middle school students as we made our way toward baggage claim. Mike, my colleague, Richard, the parent, and I followed after them on this first day of a ten-day school trip to France together. The kids’ volume gave our whole group away as American. They didn’t care at all about sliding in unnoticed.

We passed through immigration and collected our bags. Our next step, finding our tour guide, didn’t turn out to be too hard. His bold EF TOURS sign and red jacket helped us to identify him among the sparse group of people waiting to greet friends and family. Tall and smiley, he greeted us with reassuring enthusiasm that made me like him right away.

He invited us to sit so he could welcome us to France and introduce himself—René-Jean, but you can call me RJ. Our tour was comprised of groups from four different schools and we were the first bunch to arrive, he explained. Since we don’t want you to have to wait in the airport, you’ll have the day to visit and discover Nice on your own before meeting at the drop-off point and driving, finally, to the hotel. He made this sound like such a bonus that even I got excited until I realized this meant eight hours until a shower or a nap and being relieved from chaperoning the thirteen kids after a mostly sleepless night in the plane.

RJ suggested we all use the bathroom before heading out to the bus. We gladly left him in charge of watching over our bags.

After washing my hands, I dug a Kleenex out of my purse to dab my face. Jetlag and the warmth of the airport had me sweating already. Though RJ wore a jacket, he had informed us that it would be warm—high 70s—in Nice today. I pulled my hair into a rough ponytail and attached it with the elastic I always carried in my bag. Staring at myself in the mirror, I saw I still came across as sleep deprived and like a four-year-old had dressed me, but it was an improvement. The girls checked themselves and each other in the mirror and readjusted their own hair and make-up as they waited on me. I swiped some eyeliner on and, finally ready, gave a nod. We turned in unison and headed back out to RJ and the rest of the group.

The thirteen middle schoolers were so very awake. They took up their uproarious goofiness as we walked through the terminal to the parking lot. Just after exiting, though, RJ stopped and gathered our whole group to him, signaling for them to quiet down.

We’re about to meet Jeanmi, RJ explained. This is his bus, and he has some rules I need to tell you. On the bus, no yelling. Stay seated whenever the bus is moving. No gum. No food. No drinks. No horseplay. Got it?

Wide eyes peered, heads nodded, gum was swallowed. Soft mumbling replaced the screeching and giggling. Everyone slowed their step as we marched on toward the bus. I didn’t quite believe that RJ or the bus driver had much experience with middle school kids, American middle school kids anyway. I anticipated this might not go well.

Jeanmi, he had said. What kind of name was that? I wondered to myself. It didn’t even sound French. Jeanmi? My fears about this not going so well were reinforced when Jeanmi turned in our direction and I got a better view of him.

He seemed of average height and about my age. Fit, wearing slim-cut jeans and well-shined dress shoes. His leather coat reached mid-thigh. His sunglasses were pushed up on his head. He just kind of stared as we got closer. He did not smile. As the kids and I watched, he unabashedly took a long drag of a cigarette and then let it drop to the ground. Without lowering his gaze, he rubbed the still smoking butt out with the toe of his shoe. He put both hands in his coat pockets and gave an audible sigh. He looked like a badass.

2 – Nice

The sun shone bright and warm as the bus pulled out of the airport and onto the highway toward Nice. The kids pointed out the little cars, the billboards in French, the palm trees. I loved that part of bringing students overseas—their first realizations that they are not on familiar territory, their first dépaysement.

As we drove, RJ and Jeanmi joked with each other, chatted about us, their new clients, about their schedule for the day, clearly not realizing that I spoke French. At one point, I made a comment, adding to the joke they were telling. This took them both by surprise. RJ gave me a look of curiosity. You understand?

Yeah, I said. I speak a little French.

As the bus drew closer to our drop off point, Jeanmi asked RJ if I had a phone. I didn’t have one. In 2004, cell phones were still evolving, and mine would not work overseas. I’d been told that RJ would carry one, so I’d given his number to parents and to the school administration in case of emergencies. I was armed only with a calling card. Jeanmi gave me a skeptical look in the rear-view mirror. After he parked the bus, he stood up and moved past RJ toward me. For a second, I thought he’d seen one of the students doing something on the list of things not to. He marched toward me with that kind of determined step. Instead of yelling, though, he held out his cell phone—a Nokia flip phone.

Here. Take this. In case anything happens, and you need to call RJ. You shouldn’t be in the city without a phone.

I started to refuse the offer, shaking my head that this wasn’t necessary.

I’m not expecting any calls, he said, and anyone from work who needs to reach me knows I’m with RJ at the airport all day. They can get me through him. Here, take it, he insisted.

Ok. Thanks. I took it and smiled at him. Mr. Badass was a kinder, gentler type than I had expected. The offer of his phone surprised me. RJ gave me the raised eyebrow look, making clear Jeanmi did not do this on a regular basis or maybe ever. Neither one of us dared to question his decision.

Compared to the cloudy and cold March we’d left behind in Maryland, the warm sun and blue skies of Nice felt like a fast-forward to May. Jetlag made it hard to know the actual time, adding to my disorientation. My watch read noon, but I kept yawning and thinking of coffee and breakfast, not lunch. The day spread out farther than I could see at this point.

What was I going to do with thirteen kids in Nice for eight hours? We had no transportation, no group budget, no guide. It felt like more than I could take on. But I looked around Cours Saleya and saw my students using their French, the French I had taught them, to buy crepes from a vendor. He played into their enthusiasm by responding gently to their requests and comments in simple French as he swirled batter around on the pizza sized cooktop. The cheers and laughter of the kids made up for any mispronunciations, grammatical errors, or forgotten formality.

I breathed in the smells of the market—the flowers, the dried herbs, the chickpea socca bread—took in the bits of conversation and basked in the warmth of the air. I hadn’t been to Nice in years and didn’t know it well, but there was a familiarity here. The French language that I so love permeated everything, echoing off the near-by buildings, swirling around the market stalls, bouncing up from the cobblestone streets. I took a deep breath. The kids were making the best of it, as if expecting nothing different. I need to tap into their energy and their joy, I thought.

So, what’s the plan? asked Richard, the one parent in our group.

I don’t know. I think I’m going to head to the boardwalk and see if I can find anything to interest the kids.

I’d kind of like to go into the city, said Mike, my colleague, Wander around. Do some exploring. It looks like there are some shops up that way. He pointed up the street away from the market and the beach.

I wouldn’t mind going with you if that’s okay, said Richard.

Sure. I’d like the company.

And so, with Richard and Mike heading off into old Nice, I joined the kids, bought a crepe, and set off with them toward the boardwalk, our hands wrapped around warm papers dripping with Nutella.

The full midday sun beat down. I patted myself on the back for having had the forethought to bring sunglasses in the small pocket of my backpack. I shouldn’t have worried so much about how to entertain the kids. It turned out that the beach itself provided a huge distraction.

Fist-sized rocks, hot and smooth, take the place of sand on the beach in Nice. Bare feet that have not yet been calloused up from weeks of barefoot activity outside do not do well on them, but all my kids wore sneakers. They charged down onto the beach, not caring about the rocks.

When they got to the edge of the water, shoes came off. Socks were left, strewn about, turned inside out on the shore. Jeans were rolled up. The kids faltered and staggered, leaning on one another as they made their way, squealing and giggling over the slippery rocks and into the surf to barely above their ankles.

I watched from the top of the stairs, smiling, and laughing quietly at them and their silliness. Few people ventured onto the beach at the beginning of the hottest part of the day. Most sunbathers would wait until later to come out which meant I wouldn’t need to worry about topless women or men changing from city clothes into speedos in full view of everyone for another few hours.

I thought about going down to the beach and finally decided to sit on a bench on the boardwalk. I couldn’t see the kids from there, but I could hear them, and they knew how to find me if they needed anything. But they wouldn’t. The worst I could imagine happening was an inadvertent push that would leave one of them wet or a little bruised. But then they would lie in the sun for a while and dry off. No harm done. I turned my focus to people watching.

I remembered that as a kid, while living in France, my expat friends and I used to spend hours on weekends and school breaks sitting on the wall at the top of the Charles de Gaulle metro station on the Champs-Élysées. We played a game called name that tourist. This involved trying to pick out the tourists from among the Parisians and also guess their country of origin.

As foreigners living abroad, we were all searching to belong. This game we played was trite, but not mean-spirited. It fit where we all were—neither citizens of the country we lived in nor tourists. We made our guesses by observing from a distance.

Shoes most reliably gave away the bulk of tourists and their nationality from afar, we had learned. Germans wore Birkenstocks; sometimes the Dutch did too, but the Dutch were taller, typically thinner, often more sportily dressed. Italians wore pointy toed shoes, and the adults always dressed in designer outfits. Spaniards wore rounded toed shoes. Swedes and Danes wore multi-colored ones. And Americans almost always wore sneakers or flip flops. The nationalities would be confirmed for us when the people walked by and we heard the language they were speaking.

I didn’t remember having ever seen any Americans wearing shoes like my thick rubber soled ones. Still, sitting here on the boardwalk in my frumpy outfit with my backpack and my jetlag hairdo, I knew I could easily be spotted as an American tourist. Not a thing in which I took much pride.

3 – Autrefois

More than twenty years earlier, in 1982, when I was thirteen, my family had moved to France. I’d never really understood which part of my dad’s job as a businessman with a company called Norton made this possible. All I knew was that nothing more dramatic, sexy, or cool had ever happened to me.

When we moved, only my mom had any past experience in French. Still, my parents had insisted that we not live in any of the American communities common in and around Paris at that time. Instead, they moved us to Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, a small, farm town to the west of Paris and the last stop on the SNCF train from Paris’ Gare St Lazare out to the suburbs.

Worcester, Massachusetts, population 162,000, where we moved from, dwarfed tiny Saint Nom, population 3,500. On weekends, my brother and I took off on our bikes up one of the two main streets past the town hall, a pristine white building that stood next to the lush green soccer field, past the hundreds year old church and the modern supermarket, to the boulangerie.

"Four pains aux raisins, four pains au chocolat, and one bread, please" we learned to say within a week of arriving. We placed our delicate flaky cargo into our bike baskets and took turns carrying the long crusty bread wrapped only in a square of paper under our arms on the ride back home.

Pedestrians with their dogs walked along the wide, clean sidewalks. Clean except for the disregarded caca of the canines left by the dog walkers. Most of the houses hid behind thick walls taller than me. Trees lined the streets. Everything felt peaceful and safe.

My parents enrolled me in the Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye where learning French was baptism by fire. My total immersion had only one bob up for air each day with a class taught by an American teacher. Anne, Nicole, and Nadia, my three best friends, had the same classes as me. We laughed a lot. We tried to have lunch together. We spent time in between classes putting lip gloss on in the bathroom. We talked about hair and make-up. We whispered secrets to each other about our changing bodies and boys. We debated over MTV, movies, and music.

When I walked around with them, I was in a protective bubble of understanding. School, especially middle school, is terrifying when you don’t understand what anyone is saying and when you assume everyone is talking about you. For me, fitting in and passing as French became the focus of my existence for the three years we lived in France.

In my second year there, I matriculated into Troisième, the French equivalent of ninth grade with native French kids. Though school had become much easier, French class had not. I dreaded most of all our two-hour block classes every Friday.

On Fridays, we did one of three things — récitation, film watching, or rédaction. Récitation was the culminating activity after studying a poem or excerpt from a text. One by one, the teacher called us to the front of the class to recite the narrative poems, odes, and epics we had been studying. Without understanding the texts, memorizing and reciting them seemed impossible.

"Mademoiselle Heeder. À toi."

My turn.

I’d studied. I had, earnestly, desperately. I’d sat at my desk for hours going over the poem line by line. Sometimes I’d even understood enough to fall under the charm of the beauty of the phrases or images they evoked. The combination of facing the class and my lack of confidence in my French, though, meant some days I didn’t even stand up.

"Mademoiselle?"

A last chance to try, but instead I shook my head and stayed seated. I took the failing grade to avoid the embarrassment of not being able to make it past the first few lines. The kids in the back always chuckled when that happened. I’d never felt stupid at school, but I did in French class at the Lycée.

I finally redeemed myself one rédaction Friday, though.

Rédaction Fridays were devoted to writing on a given topic, usually an analysis of a book or film we’d recently studied in class. I always made sure to bring my French-English dictionary and my Bescherelle book of every conceivable French verb conjugation to class those weeks. I didn’t mind writing, but more often than not I didn’t know how to respond to the question that I should have written about for two hours.

I watched with envy as my tablemate, Isabelle, filled her grand format pages with beautiful, calligraphy-like, cursive words. She’d squint her eyes and furrow her brow in concentration as she wrote. Every once in a while, she’d catch me watching her, tilt her head, and smile. I’m sure she had no idea that I basically made stuff up to write in grammatically incorrect French.

Mondays, when we got our essays back, were almost as painful as the Friday before. In the French school system, grades are given on a scale of twenty and all grades from zero to twenty are valid and game. Most of my writing earned me a score of seven to nine. Occasionally I breached the fifty percent mark to earn an eleven out of twenty. Isabelle consistently earned eighteen, nineteen and even the occasional, and usually unattainable, twenty out of twenty. I idolized her.

The teacher often selected two or three submissions to highlight, reading excerpts from them as excellent examples of phrasing, of vocabulary choice, of imagery, or of support of a thesis. I loved hearing the French, hearing how my classmates had strung together words in a way I could not yet.

One Friday in the spring trimester, Monsieur Duprès stood, arms extended, at the front of the class.

Listen up, everyone. He waited to have our full attention. "In three weeks, as you know, we leave on our classe de voile to learn to sail in Brittany."

French schools plan these weeklong field trips for students at all levels to go hiking, skiing, or sailing. The athletic part of these trips is obviously important, but the trips are also meant to teach life skills and to be a positive experience of being away from maman and papa to learn self-reliance and independence.

In keeping with the sailing theme, Monsieur